One of the great things about what I do is getting to meet interesting, sometimes wacky people. Sounds corny but true. I spend a lot of time at Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale among the 180 or so startups there and I had heard a while back of one tenant called "Evil Mad Science". Who, or what could this be? No-one running Plug and Play seemed to know (which is not unusual as it happens).
Today I ran into one of the founders, Lenore Edman, at a community meetup at the Center. She came to sit at our table and plonked down a device which seemed to consist of a printed circuit board, a row of sequentially flashing yellow LED's and four legs.
Now you will probably never guess what this is. A miniature road safety device for warning other cars about your breakdown? An electronic signpost prototype? Nope, you are completely wrong. It's an electronic menorah (of course!!). Celebrate the holidays! C'mon, only $14 from their online store!
Lenore and her husband started Evil Mad Scientist Labs ("DIY and open source hardware for art, education, and world domination") a while ago as a kind of hobby to provide amusing electronic projects and kits and it's grown into a big enough business to employ her full time and her husband part time.
Why here in Silicon Valley? Even though they could do this from anywhere, this is where the people are who enjoy and support this kind of thing. Everyone from open-source geeks to robotics interest groups. As Lenore said - not in Portland, not in Austin, not in Boulder Colorado (she has lived in all three) but right here!
Here's my favourite EMSL kit. In this LED clock kit (from their site): "The basic Bulbdial clock kit ($65) comes complete with
three custom circuit boards,
72 ultrabright LEDs, pre-programmed ATmega168 microcontroller with
Arduino bootloader, tactile button switches, aluminum standoffs, 20 ppm
quartz crystal, custom clock face, gnomon spike, universal-input
plug-in power supply, stainless mounting hardware, plus the resistors,
capacitors and other little parts needed to build the Bulbdial clock."
Isn't that lovely? Order one here! I have to get one just to see what a "gnomon spike" actually is!
Now, you might say this is cute and fun, but not really TECHNOLOGY as we tend to think of it. Not so. For example, the clock kit includes Arduino technology that is one of a new breed of very low cost, open-source-based microcontrollers now emerging on the market and providing little building blocks for controlling all kinds of things - lights, switches, motors etc - that could, for example, make interesting and useful household gadgets in the future.
EMSL has lots of other fun stuff on their site that isn't "productised" but are fun things to reproduce at home with your kids (or just by yourself if you want). Here's one I love - the Bristlebot, a "tiny directional vibrobot". Watch how this sucker goes!
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